629 thoughts on “Measuring The Rabid Puppies Slate’s Impact on the Final Hugo Ballot”

1. That would be an ill-supported conclusion.

   Maybe. But I see nothing in your speculations to disprove it.

   If for example “Binti” got 10% of its votes from people who had a look at the SPIV list before voting, and 90% of its votes from other fans, I think it’s rather dubious to declare that nomination as a Sad Puppy victory. Even if those last 10% was necessary to secure the fifth place.

   And based on the data we have now, we don’t know if Binti placed 5th or further up, we don’t know the distance to 6th place, and we don’t know how many nominations it got via SPIV. If you want to make guesses about that, then go ahead – but you deceive yourself if you confuse those guesses with data.

2. I saw widespread non-Puppy support in various places for all 5 Novellas, ahead of the final ballot’s release. I think that SP4’s effect on that category — or pretty much any category, with the exception of Editor Minz — was negligible.

   It will be easier to tell when the totals are released after the ceremony.

3. @JJ & @Various: Our favorite space-faring kitten pointed out on his blog that Minz was on the Rabid Puppy slate; he linked to Beale’s slate and sure enough, Minz was on it. I and perhaps others were confused by @Mike Glyer’s post, which lists Bryan Thomas Schmidt instead of Jim Minz. Did Beale change his slate, or was Our Gracious Host’s table a little off-kilter?

   Anyway, my point being, Minz is on there due to RP, as far as I can tell, looking at it now. Anyone doing stats on % Rabid entries or theorizing how many RPs there were based on this info – FYI.

   Apologies if I’m misreading something here.

4. Kendall: I believe you could say I ended up a little off kilter.

   Rabid Puppies Best Editor (long form) category announced February 8: included Schmidt

   Rabid Puppies list announced March 21: included Schmidt

   Replaced: March 23 On this date Vox Day replaced Schmidt with Minz after Schmidt disavowed him on Facebook.

5. Huh? I thought Day was on a tear about not replacing anyone on his slate regardless of their objections. Why suddenly so considerate of Schmidt, but not Reynolds or Bujold?

6. @snowcrash
   Because Schmidt claims he wasn’t eligible unlike the others who were eligible.

7. Kendall: Minz is on there due to RP

   In that case, I’m more sure than ever that the effect of SP4 on the final ballot was negligible. We shall see…

8. @Mike Glyer: Aha, so he did change it late in the game. Thanks for figuring it out – I didn’t dig quite deep enough. If you don’t mind me saying, I recommend updating the table to show both names – with a little note that one was changed to the other. (I’d suggest an asterisk, but. . . . 😉 )

   @JJ: “In that case, I’m more sure than ever that the effect of SP4 on the final ballot was negligible. We shall see…”

   Yeah, I’ve been giving SP4 a bit more credit than was due, methinks. Oh, they may’ve had some effect, but I doubt it’ll be easy to tell, even post-awards.

9. Kendall: Yeah, I’ve been giving SP4 a bit more credit than was due, methinks. Oh, they may’ve had some effect, but I doubt it’ll be easy to tell, even post-awards.

   I imagine that a good bellwether would be seeing how many nominations Declan Finn  that Honor Harrington vampire novel got in the Novel category — or whether he even shows up on the Novel longlist.

10. JJ: I imagine that a good bellwether would be seeing how many nominations Declan Finn got in the Novel category — or whether he even shows up on the Novel longlist.

    Exactly. I’m waiting on that stat myself.

11. @Mike Glyer
    Any reason your leaving Minz red?

12. Tasha Turner: As I meant to say, I effed up and you are right. I will fix it…

13. @Mike Glyer: Thanks – I feel what you’ve updated in the past is the clearest way to do things (but there’re probably several ways to represent it).

14. @Mike Glyer
    Thanks. I don’t know how you keep track of everything around here. You do a great job.

    I’ve created a copy of the shortlist and marked all the things I already know how I’m voting. Now I’m reading/checking out stuff I didn’t read/know earlier so the day voting opens up I can have a good portion of my voting done unless they have database problems again.

15. I spent some time this week looking at the Sad Puppy list and comparing it to the Rabids and the nominations, and noticed a couple of things.

    1. If the Sads were going to matter anywhere, it would have been the Best Editor: Short Form category. There was only a single Rabid pick (Jerry Pournelle), making it a relatively wide-open field; the Sads had only six people on their list; one of them was Jerry, and another was Bryan Thomas Schmidt, who had said publicly he would decline any nominations he got this year. The remaining Sad recommendations were John Joseph Adams, S. M. Sterling, Jason Rennie, and Paula Goodlett. The only one of those who got on the ballot was JJA, and given that he just missed the ballot last year (and was a finalist for this Hugo in a previous year) it seems deeply unlikely that he needed their help to swing the nomination his way.

    2. Of the works that were on the Sad Puppy list but not the Rabid slate, the only one that was not also nominated for the Nebula Award was the Dr. Who episode. (And there’s no “short form” Ray Bradbury Award, and only a handful of TV episodes have been nominated.) I’m pretty sure that the written works are also all Locus Award Finalists, as is John Joseph Adams.

    (Since I’m one of the authors who was on the SP list, I’m not exactly a neutral party here, obviously. I did not demand an asterisk because when the list came out, I was dealing with some minor but annoying health problems and preparing for a trip, then traveling. I didn’t have time to deal with a bunch of bullshit on Twitter, and given Cat Valente’s experience I was pretty sure that would be the primary outcome. I looked at the SP list and was certain that it wasn’t going to matter at all. Finally, I will admit that I felt a certain amount of amused glee that John C. Wright, who clearly had not read my story, listed it on his blog along with the implication that his readers should check it out / vote for it.) (Okay, what he actually said: “Remember: do not read a single word or letter of any of these works. This is a slate vote. You are mindless robotic zombies, as soulless as Daleks.” And then he insulted Patrick Nielsen Hayden and told his readers to go nominate his novel because Tor decided not to publish it.)

    The Rabids were the list that mattered this year, and since the Sads released a “recommendations” list of approximately a gajillion words of fiction and nonfiction less than two weeks before the nominations were due, and didn’t even promptly get it up on the main page you’d see when you went to their main site, it’s not super surprising that they were ignored.

    I think there was a fair amount of evidence that it was the Rabids that mattered last year, too — it was just harder to spot, since the lists overlapped so heavily.

16. @Naomi Kritzer

    I think that’s a good analysis on Editor. I’d particularly have expected Stirling and Rennie to be popular sad-only choices, Stirling because of the pro-Baen contingent within the SP and the later because he’s a vocal Sad.
    Rennie is actually particularly interesting because he has noms for SuperversiveSF (fanzine) and Sci Fi Journal (semi pro) courtesy of being a rabid pick. His level of sad support ought to have been similar in each category so it’s very telling that without a rabid endorsement he doesn’t make it in editor.

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18. I think it’s a shame Rabid Puppies have managed to be so successful at destroying the Hugo’s fir two years running. I don’t particularly understand the point of doing that. The Hugo Award has always been a popularity contest and taking the award away from a popular author whose politics is different than VD’s is not going to diminish the popularity that author already holds. Popularity has never guaranteed the quality of the work that wins the Hugo Award either. If VD wants to promote his viewpoint, he ought to be creating his own award show instead.

    My opinion on Hugo voting is we shouldn’t take the award from deserving work just because it landed on either puppy list. The categories destroyed by the lists are mostly pretty obvious and if I manage to attend this year ( I’m going to try) I’ll vote no award in those categories.

    But personally, I think the best solution last year would have been and this year would be, to replace the Hugo award with the Laika Award, Laika being the saddest puppy in history. The award would be easily created by simply making small plastic dogs in space suits and attaching them to the existing Hugo Award rockets with a life line. If one were to do this, we could avoid having to have no winner in any category, because they wouldn’t be Hugos this year. They’d be Laikas, which would forever identify them with the controversial Sad and Rabid Puppy recommended and slate lists.

19. @david That is…poetic.

20. @David Merrill

    I don’t particularly understand the point of doing that. The Hugo Award has always been a popularity contest and taking the award away from a popular author whose politics is different than VD’s is not going to diminish the popularity that author already holds. Popularity has never guaranteed the quality of the work that wins the Hugo Award either. If VD wants to promote his viewpoint, he ought to be creating his own award show instead.

    It doesn’t really have anything to do with popularity, or promoting his viewpoint, or even the Hugo Awards as awards. It has to do with Mr Beale’s vindictive revenge against the Nielsen Haydens, John Scalzi, SFWA, N.K. Jemisin, and the broader swathe of SJWs who he believes are destroying the whole of Western civilization. He doesn’t give a crap about the Hugos, and he certainly doesn’t care to ever win one.

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